SF, Sci-Fi, Fantasy and other dirty words.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

I think I do have abit of a love/hate relationship with sci-fi. I probably used to enjoy the huge overblown space opera stuff more than anything else when I was younger because I no doubt found reality with a capital 'R' far too boring and cumbersome to be inspiring. I think after reading G.K.Chesterton though (Catholic essayist) he more or less opened my eyes to the fact that reality as is, is far more entertaining and bizarre than anything a science fiction writer could come up with.

From a Defense of Nonsense..

Religion has for centuries been trying to make men exult in the 'wonders' of creation, but it has forgotten that a thing cannot be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible. So long as we regard a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot properly wonder at it. It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper. Everything has in fact another side to it, like the moon, the patroness of nonsense. Viewed from that other side, a bird is a blossom broken loose from its chain of stalk, a man a quadruped begging on its hind legs, a house a gigantesque hat to cover a man from the sun, a chair an apparatus of four wooden legs for a cripple with only two.

Now you could argue that in the same way all a good sci-fi/fantasy writer can do is to draw your attention closer to the absurdity and magic of what's already there: Cats which collude with wizards and bring bad omens directs your attention to the fact that cats do have a kind of 'sly' otherwordly quality to them. Dragons probably have their origins in past civilisations who stumbled upon Dinosaur bones and marveled what these completely bizarre creatures were actually like. While anything to do with robots/machines taking over the world i think feeds into that sense that all machines (whether its a toaster, digital watch, or pc) are A. Inherently creepy since youre basically witnessing a human-organic trait abstracted and exaggerted and B. Unnerving because youre always going to have that sense of something artificial being able to outdo you at your own game. I think all good sci-fi-fantasy addresses those sorts of issues.

The kind of sci-fantasy that tends to give sci-fantasy a bad name imo is where it all turns into an excuse to escape reality and deny the fantastic/terrifying present in daily life. I think all that Trekky memorising engine-hull schematics/names of off-world colonies completely misses the point in that respect - if Star Trek has any value atall it's obviously as an ongoing political meditation on where the sorts of social policies we already have in place would lead us if we spread them throughout the entire galaxy. Again it's about directing you towards the problems and intrigue of daily life, not a never-never land where you never have to move out of your parent's basement and can collect star wards action figures for the rest of your life.

[falafel]

These days most people I know appreciate someone who reads anything beyond appalling shit-lit like celebrity penned slush fiction and sci-fi fan fiction. I'm not sure it's a dirty word outside of people in academia who like to mainly discuss classics, and as such are sneery of most contemporary fiction anyway.

Not sure that's really the case, on the snobbery in academia front. Most literary academics at my old uni, although they had their own interests, spent half their time pushing the line that the literary canon is just a relic, the world is your oyster, blah blah blah... my BA and MA dissertations were about science fiction (albeit literary forms) and nobody batted an eyelid.

[Incandenza]

Put me down as a sci-fi lover.
My biggest problem is that as a genre it is often a refuge for the talentless. It's incredibly rare for me to put a book down, but whenever it happens, it's usually a sci-fi book which I've been drawn to by concept, and then tossed at the wall for the incredibly wooden prose that is no better than a primary school story assignment sustained for a million billion pages.

I often make a mental note of all the ones I want to read, and then pick them up in one of my many charity shop jaunts, only to leave them languishing on my shelf in favour of books that I know won't make me furiously hoy them out the window.

I love PKD, and JG Ballard (who has quite a cold prose style, but still manages to craft compelling ideas and characters), and I've got most of the 'Sci-Fi classic' range that they put out, but am always a bit nervous about trying new ones.
Anyone tell me if these are worth a punt?

Iain M Banks (Where do I start? Is The Algebraist any cop? It's been on my shelf for years.)
Titan by Stephen Baxter (The plot really intrigued me, but the cover and font have been putting me off- I would never judge any other genre by a cover, but this is what sci-fi does to you!)

I basically love anything that places compelling characters written with a certain level of artistry within a sci-fi setting that's going to get me thinking long after it's over. I.E. Primer. In novel form.

Reccomendations?

Similarly, if you haven't read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, do so. Or High Rise by JG Ballard. In fact, most of Ballard is pretty good.

[Incandenza]

The kind of sci-fantasy that tends to give sci-fantasy a bad name imo is where it all turns into an excuse to escape reality and deny the fantastic/terrifying present in daily life. I think all that Trekky memorising engine-hull schematics/names of off-world colonies completely misses the point in that respect - if Star Trek has any value atall it's obviously as an ongoing political meditation on where the sorts of social policies we already have in place would lead us if we spread them throughout the entire galaxy. Again it's about directing you towards the problems and intrigue of daily life, not a never-never land where you never have to move out of your parent's basement and can collect star wards action figures for the rest of your life.

This.
This is what Sci-fi is for, for me. I can't remember who said it, but one of the big names said Sci-fi was the only literary form with which to properly consider humans as a species, and the general complexity of modern morality. Something like that anyway.
I'm not interested in it as escapism, to be honest. That's why something like Avatar (although admittedly a great spectacle) left me cold. Films and books like Primer, 2001, Blade Runner, Most of Ballard's work, and pretty much all of PKD's work force you to look at the way we live with a bit of objectivity, and consider what possible effect new developments in technology or so on could have on our already pretty fucked-up race. One that does this in an interesting way that is criminally underrated imo is A.I., although I'm pretty scared to ever bring it up in public conversation as it often results in people getting visibly enraged that they ever had to sit through it.

This is also why Fantasy doesn't really do it for me (And I've tried!). I'm obviously not going to dismiss a whole genre, because that would be the work of the enemy, but a big thing that always happens whenever spells get involved is 'the get out'.

Meaning that whenever there's some big situation going on, there's always some spell they've got up their sleeve that they can whip out to save the day. This often happens in sci-fi too, in the worst excesses of Star Trek or even Dr. Who. The moment when you think "How are they gonna get out of this one?!", only to be shattered when said character suddenly presses the magic make-gun-better button, or whips out a spell, or some ludicrous worm hole theory, or something. It completely dissipates all tension you might possibly feel, as you know that they'll have a get out.

I much prefer it when the fantastical elements are kept to a minimum, which makes them more fantastical. Less is definitely more. Primer (keep bringing it up, sorry) being the perfect case in point. The best sci-fi will take place in a very recognisable world, with a few technological advancements to change the gameplan a little. Whenever they've got great big engines and amazing lasers and all kinds of faux-science shite, I pretty much lose interest. Same goes for whenever spells and demons get involved.

A great example of less is more would be Firefly, which is a bit overrated imo, but has a lot of great moments where you think "How are they gonna get out of this ridiculous scrape?", and there's an actual, believable escape where the characters use their ingenuity and previously established skills. This way you're constantly aware that they're not invincible, and their tech is only going to get them so far.

Nerd Rage over.

[Famous Mortimer]

Reccomendations?

I think you'll probably like Neal Stephenson. Anything by him, really, although his big series, the Baroque Cycle, is alternate history.

Allen Steele is hard sci-fi which is actually decent; Alastair Reynolds is nearly always brilliant, and has made an excellent universe to set most of his stories in; China Mieville started slow but got better quickly; Robert Sheckley wrote nice short funny books.

[Zero Gravitas]

Neil Asher writes James Bond in space

I have tried a few of Asher's novels mostly I've found them to be a little too much of a loose stringing of action sequences--not to mention his love of "actinic" and "pellucid"--but there was a nice section at the start of Gridlinked that I rather enjoyed;  a short-ish explanation of whatever mechanism he imagines is used to travel from world to world consisting of incomprehensible descriptions of an infinite zero-thickness surface stretching between the stars into which a man in transit is transformed into charge and distant points occupy the same space before being obliterated in a blast of hard radiation.

I think sci-fi is unique in being able to express such ideas that once again make humans seem very small, bordering on creating an awe that short-circuits reason in the style of ecstatic descriptions of human insignificance before god. ha, I've just remembered Ken MacLeod called the technological singularity 'the rapture for nerds', I think that makes sense in that context.

[sirhenry]

My favourite James Bond-style sf book has to be Wasp by Eric Frank Russell[nb]Almost certainly the inspiration for the inferior Stainless Steel Rat[/nb]. A lightweight, fun romp where the twist is that the hero is a covert operative working to bring down a government by innuendo. He even has Bond-style gadgets, such as subversive posters that he pastes to shop windows - the catch is that when water is added to wash them off the ink turns to etching fluid that etches the poster's message in the glass. Great fun for when your brain doesn't need stretching.

[All Surrogate]

Iain M Banks (Where do I start? Is The Algebraist any cop? It's been on my shelf for years.)

If you've got The Algebraist to hand, go for it.  Otherwise, you may as well read his SF in order of publication, the first being Consider Phlebas.

I think sci-fi is unique in being able to express such ideas that once again make humans seem very small, bordering on creating an awe that short-circuits reason in the style of ecstatic descriptions of human insignificance before god. ha, I've just remembered Ken MacLeod called the technological singularity 'the rapture for nerds', I think that makes sense in that context.

Speaking of Ken Macleod, he recently put his Novacon 2006 speech on his blog: Science fiction is the first human literature.

[MojoJojo]

I found Consider Phlebas very hard going compared to the other Culture books, although I was a teen when I read it.
Player of Games - it's best!

[Zetetic]

A great example of less is more would be Firefly, which is a bit overrated imo, but has a lot of great moments where you think "How are they gonna get out of this ridiculous scrape?", and there's an actual, believable escape where the characters use their ingenuity and previously established skills. This way you're constantly aware that they're not invincible, and their tech is only going to get them so far.

And it's notable that was sold as a 'Western in Space' in an attempt to highlight this. And that it was still quickly cancelled.

I've just finished reading Crash, and I can't decide if that's sci-fi or not.
(On a sidenote I thought Incandenza's description of Ballard's style as 'cold' is interesting, and exactly what I'd be searching for. I've also heard it described as very 'visual' and I suspect that actually they're one and the same. Works beautifully in Vermilion Sands and the rest, but I'm not so sure in his longer works.)

[Lyndon]

Player of Games is best for me too.

I reread Excession recently, having a craving for some AI Ship banter, which Banks always delivers. But there's some shit in there too, there's a young girl who I think we're supposed to empathise with, because she gets dragged into Special Circumstances to help with something, but she never does anything except whine and be a spoilt bitch, but it's all done in a tone of her being a rich, beautiful, enviable, typical Culture citizen. I don't know what possessed Banks to try to make this character seem cool. Probably because he was a basement-dwelling virgin loser until The Wasp Factory.

[HappyTree]

I thought A.I. was amazing. I cry buckets every time.

[CollaterlySisters]

Shirley Surely Ian Banks having an alternate name to brand his 'genre' fiction speaks volumes about the prejudice against SF? Amongst publishers at least. See also Michael Marshall Smith. & why 'Cloud Atlas' wasn't SF (in the Atwood vein) I don't know (unless they knew it'd win nada if it were).
Other than the above, & those in previous posts,  I also rate Jeff Noon & Tim Powers.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Put me down as a sci-fi lover.
My biggest problem is that as a genre it is often a refuge for the talentless. It's incredibly rare for me to put a book down, but whenever it happens, it's usually a sci-fi book which I've been drawn to by concept, and then tossed at the wall for the incredibly wooden prose that is no better than a primary school story assignment sustained for a million billion pages.

I often make a mental note of all the ones I want to read, and then pick them up in one of my many charity shop jaunts, only to leave them languishing on my shelf in favour of books that I know won't make me furiously hoy them out the window.

I love PKD, and JG Ballard (who has quite a cold prose style, but still manages to craft compelling ideas and characters), and I've got most of the 'Sci-Fi classic' range that they put out, but am always a bit nervous about trying new ones.
Anyone tell me if these are worth a punt?

Iain M Banks (Where do I start? Is The Algebraist any cop? It's been on my shelf for years.)
Titan by Stephen Baxter (The plot really intrigued me, but the cover and font have been putting me off- I would never judge any other genre by a cover, but this is what sci-fi does to you!)

I basically love anything that places compelling characters written with a certain level of artistry within a sci-fi setting that's going to get me thinking long after it's over. I.E. Primer. In novel form.

Reccomendations?

Similarly, if you haven't read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, do so. Or High Rise by JG Ballard. In fact, most of Ballard is pretty good.

Id highly recommend Ted Chiang, he basically does what any decent philosopher aims for  - takes a simple premise and from there draws out all the posible outcomes/ramifications. So he'll take an incredibly simple idea like "what would happen if i took a pill and became super-intelligent" but addresses the question from any number of angles youd never have thought possible. I also see on his wiki that he's down as a 'speculative fiction' writer rather than stictly 'sci-fi'. More kudos for him i suppose if youre into literary credibility.

Just one caveat though: I think both Wallace and Ballard are terrible writers so you might by extension think Chiang is pants. 

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

It may also go without saying that some of the best sci-fi that's come out in the past 10-20 years has been written for comics. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Invisibles by Grant morrison are my favourites.

This is also why Fantasy doesn't really do it for me (And I've tried!). I'm obviously not going to dismiss a whole genre, because that would be the work of the enemy, but a big thing that always happens whenever spells get involved is 'the get out'.

Yes I agree; I usually avoid fantasy for the same reasons. Oddly though ive always found that fairy tales somehow manage to get away with those types of plot devices. The difference with fairytales though i think is that spells and magic are never used as a means to get out of a tricky situation or move forward the plot - Magical spells are either used as warning against the excesses of human desire or as in the form of a 'pact'; an illustration that for every gain made somewhere youre making a loss. Essentially theyre just ways of addressing day to day moral problems with abit of drama and speculation thrown in. By contrast with fantasy I always get the feeling that the magical elements purely exists to gloss over the fact that what's actually going on is not much more than what youd find in the average Mills & Boon novel - boy fancies girl, girl fancies man, boy tries to prove his honour in order to win girl from man. If it wasnt for the breast plates and orcs 14 year old boys would never bother to read it.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

That's one of the reasons Tolkien and Terry Pratchett are still my favourite writers of fantasy - magic is rarely seen in LOTR/Hobbit/Silmarillion, and in Discworld the whole institution of wizardry is about containing magic, not wielding it, there's also a principle of conservation of energy there.

Where's the best place to start with Moorcock? I read a few of the Eternal Champion novels when I was a kid but they went a bit over my head.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

For Moorcock I'd start with "The Shores Of Death", an early, self-contained one.

[Zetetic]

By contrast with fantasy I always get the feeling that the magical elements purely exists to gloss over the fact that what's actually going on is not much more than what youd find in the average Mills & Boon novel - boy fancies girl, girl fancies man, boy tries to prove his honour in order to win girl from man. If it wasnt for the breast plates and orcs 14 year old boys would never bother to read it.

What about Magical Realism, in so far as it's clearly fantasy?

Whatever you can say about The Life and Adventures of the Trobadora Beatrice, as told by her Minstrel Laura, any comparison to a Mills & Boon novel (which would be odd for a number of reasons given that it ranges over poetry, epistolary forms, morse code, revelatory gospel pastiche, fairytale and traditional narrative, both in the novel proper and the 7 'intermezzos' and the works by people within the book) isn't likely to equate the two. It's also incidentally a fantastic book, available in English translation. I suppose you might even push that it mixes science and fantasy quite heavily - for example there's a section that alternates between explanations of Soviet nutritional science and the ability of a fairy to restore flesh so that her and her lover can eat each other.

Edit: Bah, perhaps by your definition, that kind of literature simply falls under 'fairytale', which isn't that far off.

I think that the problems with 'bad' fantasy and 'bad' sci-fi (other than the problems of 'bad' works in general) are pretty similar; it's whether or not they're consistent. If either magic or science are used without any kind of recognisable causality or law-like behaviour then it quickly loses any kind of drama, or at least suspense.

[Zetetic]

Id highly recommend Ted Chiang, he basically does what any decent philosopher aims for  - takes a simple premise and from there draws out all the posible outcomes/ramifications. So he'll take an incredibly simple idea like "what would happen if i took a pill and became super-intelligent" but addresses the question from any number of angles youd never have thought possible.

Do you mean Understand? I've just started reading it based on your recommendation of Chiang. It's rather interesting so far, if a little irritating at times.

[Jake Thingray]

I'd be interested if anyone on here has an opinion on the output of John Brosnan, an Australian writer long in Britain, who died in 2005. I always enjoyed his film reviews in STARBURST and the sadly short-lived CINEMA, finding out more about his life I feel sorry for him, and worry I may end up like him. As I honestly don't want to go into ranting, suffice to say I don't like sci-fi or know that much about it, therefore I can't express an opinion about his novels, perhaps someone here could. He often used pseudonyms, including that of Harry Adam Knight.